His Cruel Joke, My Broken Heart

After the humiliation of the letters, I stopped talking to Damian. Completely. He tried to approach me, tried to explain, but I simply walked away. He called, he messaged, but I ignored it all. The silence between us stretched for weeks, then months. I didn't care how long it lasted. I was done.

Then, after the final college acceptance letters were mailed out, Damian showed up at my doorstep. He held a box of my favorite red velvet cupcakes. "Elena," he said, his voice hesitant, "I'm sorry. I was a jerk. A complete and utter idiot about everything."

He tried to hand me the cupcakes, but I kept my hands firmly by my sides. "I know I messed up with the scholarship," he continued, a flicker of genuine remorse in his eyes. "And the letters… I swear, I didn't know Gigi would do that. She just… found them in my room. I was so angry at you for not apologizing to her that I didn't even think."

"You never did apologize to Gigi, did you?" he asked, a hint of his old annoyance creeping in. "But it's okay. We can put all that behind us now. Let's just… forgive each other, okay? Everything will be fine. We got into the same college, right? We can finally be together, openly. No more hiding." He even reached out, as if to touch my arm.

I remained still, a stone statue. He misinterpreted my silence. A smile, full of hope, spread across his face. "This is great, right? No more secrets. No more drama. Just us. We'll have the best four years."

His words hit me then. No more hiding. It wasn't us who were hiding. It was him. He was the one who was ashamed of me. Ashamed of my weight, ashamed of my unwavering love. I was never good enough for him to claim publicly. My love was just a tool, a punchline.

A strange sense of relief washed over me. I was grateful. Grateful that he had shown me his true colors before I invested any more of myself. Grateful that fate, in its own cruel way, had gently pushed me away from a life that would have slowly suffocated me.

That day, I went online and changed my college choice. I had always secretly wanted to go to Berkeley, to study literature, but I' d suppressed that dream, making Stanford my goal because it aligned with Damian' s plans. Not anymore. Now, it was just my plan. I would not be foolish again.

Throughout the summer, Damian called and texted incessantly. "Want to grab coffee?" "Movie night?" "The gang's going to the beach, coming?" I politely declined every invitation. "Busy helping my mom." "Working on a summer project." "Visiting relatives." He sounded confused, then hurt, then simply resigned. He probably told himself I was just playing hard to get, or punishing him. He wouldn't understand that I was simply gone.

One evening, he called, his voice bright. "So, what's your major, Elena? We never talked about it."

"Something in the humanities," I said vaguely, unwilling to share anything real with him.

Move-in day arrived. I imagined Damian, probably buzzing with excitement, directing his parents to unload his expensive new dorm furniture. He'd call me, full of plans for our first campus dinner. He'd ramble about all the things we' d do together, the parties, the football games, the late-night study sessions. Maybe he'd even talk about our first kiss, finally, after all those years.

The phone rang. It was him. His voice was laced with excitement, with a desperate longing I hadn't heard before. "Elena! I'm here! Are you all settled in? Let's get dinner tonight. I know the perfect place…" He was probably picturing it all, our shared future, the one he had just so carelessly tossed aside a few months ago.

But then, my calm voice cut through his fantasy. "I'm not here, Damian."